Grit Your Teeth and Bear It
by Listerly
Summary: In which Clint and Natasha get stuck on a boring mission in Kansk, Russia. Early on in their partnership. Rated T for safety, simply because I have no idea where I'm going with this. Not a one-shot, they frustrate me with Clint and Natasha. Clintasha. And the third chapter's ending? *troll face* Not even within ten miles of sorry.
1. Chapter 1

Clint was really, _really_ starting to hate Kansk. It was a tiny-ass town in the region of Nowhere, Russia, and in January, he couldn't feel his face ten seconds after stepping outside. Not to mention this was probably Coulson's revenge for the fiasco in Bolivia: dumping them in one of the shittiest safe houses he'd ever seen.

Natasha still looked sexy wrapped up in two shirts, a hoodie, and a navy blue parka with heavy duty leather gloves and heat reflecting canvas pants, and black boots. He was pretty sure he looked beat up, what with frostbite covering the back of his neck from being outside too long and not dressing for the weather here. But hey, the Quinjet was warm and no one told him it'd be forty below when he stepped outside. He and Natasha were now huddled in silence next to the wheezing heater that barely put out any tangible heat at all. Typical.

The mark was next door to them, in a place that was still pretty terrible, yet it had a working heater, a nice looking bed, and bookshelf with some good books on it. Clint glared at the well worn copy of Safe Haven. He loved that book. Secretly. He broke off the glare so Natasha didn't notice. He focused on suppressing a shiver that he could feel coming on in his well toned abdomen.

He gritted his teeth together so his teeth wouldn't chatter. Inwardly, he smirked at the fact he was doing Coulson's favorite saying: "Grit your teeth and bear it". Outwardly, he kept a poker face, because despite the fact that they had been partners for six months, Natasha probably wouldn't appreciate him being humorous in this situation. Honestly, the girl was super hot and deadly and all around amazing, but she had no sense of humor. He didn't get it.

Next to him, said hot red-headed Russian involuntarily shivered.

He got up, feeling the soreness in his knees from kneeling on the floor next to the heater watching the mark for going on eight hours now. He dug around in his backpack pointlessly, just needing something to do. He bent over just a little to stretch out his knees, then twisted his chin to the left to crack his sore neck. He fell asleep on the Quinjet with his neck in an awkward position and is now feeling the consequences. Finally, since there is nothing for him to do, he goes back to sit next to Natasha.

She doesn't look at him, but surprises him when she speaks.

"Is there running water?" she asks without taking her eyes off of the mark's window.

"Ah, yeah, I think so," Clint replies steadily, his voice rusty from disuse. He's barely spoken all day.

Natasha wordlessly hands him her Glock and says, "I need a shower. And some rest." She rises, snags her back pack off the bed and walks into the bathroom. Clint simply turns and checks the window again, then, when he hears the lock on the bathroom door click, twists the gun in his hands, feeling the remnants of the heat from Natasha's hand on the handle.

Natasha emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later in a different outfit that consists of largely the same type of clothing. "Wake me in a few hours," she tells him, then slides under the threadbare, scratchy wool covers and after a few minutes, her breathing deepened and evened, signaling her passing out.

He lets her sleep for four hours, then says loudly, "Hey, Natasha, wake up." She starts awake, but does not whip out the knife she's holding under the poor excuse for a pillow the way she would've had he shaken her awake. Clint feels dead on his feet, and has been awake for ten hours doing absolutely nothing since three this morning, and even for a sniper with infinite patience, this is testing.

She sits up, swings her legs out of bed, digs a brush out of her backpack and yanks it through her unruly bed-head until her ringlets hang loose in a very attractive way around her.

Natasha takes his place at the window and he get up and staggers into the bathroom. The light flickers, and it's really no more than a closet, but it's got a shower. He strips down and can't suppress the violent shudders that wrack his body, the freezing air sinking into his skin. He turns on the shower and clicks the lock. He puts his fingers in the spray, and is pleased to find it's not the just-melted-from-a-glacier temperature he expected, merely a cool stream of water.

He showers quickly, scrubbing his hair with his nails, the water burning on his neck and shoulders where his frostbite his, but he ignores it, just focuses on the list of people he hates for putting him in _this_ situation. He shuts off the water and steps out, then grabs one of the two towels from the bar jammed into the wall. Hurriedly toweling the beads of water off his body, he has begun to mildly shiver again. Then Clint realizes he forgot to grab his pack for a change of clothes. And when he stepped out of the shower he got water all over the pile of clothes he wore in here.

"Shit," he mutters under his breath. Well, he doesn't really have another choice. He wraps the towel firmly around his waist and checks to make sure it won't fall off in front of Natasha.

Clint unlocks and opens the door, then forces himself to casually saunter over to the bed where his pack was.

Natasha looks over and follows him with her eyes as he bends over and grabs his pack, slings it onto his back, and saunters back into the bathroom to change.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha thought she knew what she was getting into when she defected from the Red Room. She did not know, however, that she was going to be so privileged to see Clint wearing only a towel that she didn't have to work hard to imagine what was underneath it.

He was casual as could be, walking out into the room in front of her in that, like he had done it many times. And maybe he had. The thought of Clint with someone made her eyes tighten, and the more she thought about it, the more it bothered her. Not just the jealously, either. The fact that this really proved she didn't know Clint. She knew nothing about him, and they were partners. The Red Room did things differently; you simply didn't get to know your partner. You never knew if your next kill order would be them

But at SHIELD... Whenever she ate lunch by herself, she would look around and see all the partners and teams, talking and laughing, or deep in a serious and clearly intimate conversation.

It made her feel bad for shoving Clint out. It made her want to change that. For the second time in her entire twenty years she found herself wanting something: An intimate, close partnership with Clint. She wanted to be able to confess her secrets to him without being judged. She wanted to laugh and causally talk with him about her life and her thoughts.

The first time she ever wanted something -however briefly- was a few minutes ago when Clint walked out of the bathroom practically naked.

Then Clint returned, fully dressed and water still glistening in his short hair from his shower. Natasha flinched at the noise of the door opening, just then realizing how deeply lost in thought she was. Clint froze momentarily and looked her over, clearly wondering why the hell she jumped so hard. He came and sat next to her.

She smirked at him, then got up and grabbed him by the arms and dragged him over to the bed. "You need sleep, mister."

He laughed and shook his head in a childish way. "No. Don' wanna."

She let herself give a small, girlish giggle because she wanted to, and pushed his muscular shoulders down on the bed. "Yes," she insisted, and let herself relish the feel of his muscles underneath his shoulders for a moment longer than necessary, and prayed to whatever higher power there was that he thought she was just making sure he'd stay put.

He smiled at her, a genuine smile, which put dimples in his cheeks and she thought maybe this wouldn't be so hard.

And then, of course, the door had to be kicked open.

They both were up in a flash and pointing their weapons at the intruder, Natasha two 9mm pistols, Clint an arrow on his bow. How he got to his bow and arrows to fast and where he hid them that she didn't notice before Natasha had no idea, but it made her appreciate the fact he was on her side, and one of the most professional people in their employment she'd ever met all over again.

But no matter how professional they were, it didn't stop the darts filled with an unknown substance piercing their skin faster than they could blink. Clint staggered into the wall next to him, and Natasha dropped one of her guns, fighting the heavy haze descending over her mind. Her knees went weak, and she fought falling to her knees for five seconds, but they inevitably hit the floor, and she slumped to the side, her head hitting the floor. As her vision went dark, she felt someone -Clint- fall on top of her.

When Natasha slowly came to, she registered four things immediately. One, she didn't know where she was. Two, she was bound and lying on a cold metal floor. Three, and most importantly, she didn't know where her partner was, making her single minded with one thought.

Get free and find him.

So she maybe accidently liked him a lot more than she ever originally planned.

The desire to find him did not, however, remove all professionalism and sense of self-preservation. He wasn't so important to her that she'd just blindly started thrashing to get free and find him. She remained motionless and limp, and cracked open the eye that was closest to the floor, for less likely detection. A dark warehouse. On the metal catwalk probably sixty feet in the air above the main factory, with a large, dark Times Square-style TV directly across from her. Most importantly, it was abandoned. No one was there with her, at least as far as she could see in the cavernous room.

She sat up tried to sit up, and a shot rang out, and all of a sudden her left side blazed with agony. A small, hoarse yelp escaped her lips as she fell back to the catwalk. She kicked herself for making any noise.

Her thoughts raced, the pain tinging her vision red. Her pulse sped, and she could feel the blood soaking her side and shirt. She was going to bleed out her, alone. Without ever getting her second chance at life that Clint offered her when he made a specific different call. _I'm sorry Clint_ she thoughts sadly. She tested her bonds. Strong as steel. She didn't even have any wiggle room. They bound her at her elbows and wrists, and her knees and ankles. Completely and utterly immobilized, anger started building in her chest.

At one point in her life, before SHIELD and Clint and Coulson and Fury, she'd been sure she wanted to die. But now, she knew a very different truth. Every cell in her body, every fiber of her being, all chanted in unison _Live, live, live._ White hot fury coursed through her. She was the Black Widow. She was going to die doing battle. She was going to be killed in action, and that was the only way she'd accept death. She would _not _be taken out alone in an abandoned warehouse. She would not die by bleeding out, tied up, because she was basically an amateur Houdini. No one could tie her up. It went against nature. _I am not done here_, she thought viciously. _I am not ready to die. _

But all the same, she could here her pulse slowing, however fractionally, but slowing nonetheless. She glanced down at her stomach, and found a small pool of blood by her abdomen.

Well, she had very few options, so the best thing she could to was lay still and try to slow her heart rate and breathing. Natasha rolled onto her side so that the would was up in the air so she wouldn't bleed out as fast. She awkwardly shifted her bound arms, pressing them to the wound as best as she could. She tried to relax her entire body, starting from her toes and going up. Taking deep breaths, she closed her eyes and listened to the blood roaring in her ears, hearing her pulse stop racing. Whether that was from blood loss or calming down, she wasn't sure, but she hoped it was the latter.

And for the first time since she was six years old, Natalia Alianovna Romanova prayed. She prayed for a miracle.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint didn't know where he was. It scared him. For the first time since he faced the Black Widow, someone he viewed as an entirely different person than Natasha, he felt scared. The same scared little kid who was beat up by his brother and trusted mentor and left for the dead behind the big top. The same little kid who was disrespected and mistreated by everyone at SHIELD. The same little kid who was trapped in a burning warehouse on his tenth mission.

As he held very still and tried to calm down, a gigantic flat screen flickered to life across from him. The light cast from it was bright enough that it made Clint squint as his eyes adjusted to it. Natasha appeared on the screen, bound and dazed. He watched in silent dread as she cracked open one eye, scanned the room, then sat up. Almost immediately, a shot that came from speakers and somewhere in the warehouse simultaneously rang out. Letting Clint know she was somewhere in this wretched place. On-screen Natasha yelped and fell back to the floor where she laid, dazed with pain, for about a minute.

A man appeared on the screen, his face hidden by pixels. "If you want to find her, I suggest you do soon. She is somewhere in here, and she is currently bleeding at a quite alarming rate. I would hurry if I were you. We estimate she has... Five minutes? Before she bleeds out, that is. Find her, little Hawk."

Clint shot a glare at the man, and the screen went dark.

He scrambled to his feet and sprinted down the catwalk, pounded down the stairs, and ran to the center of the room. He surrendered his sight, which made his heart race even faster, and he used his almost-as-perfect hearing to listen. He picked up a barely-there, faint groan coming from his left and he spun and full-blown sprinted that way.

He ran into another just as cavernous room, and saw a flash of red up on a catwalk. Heedlessly bolting over to the stairs he grabbed the railing and swung himself, then practically tripped up the steps. He saw her as soon as he reached the top of the stairs, and stopped dead, his heart sinking. Her face was twisted in a grimace of pain, her abdomen laying in a pool of blood. Her face was so pale, too pale. She was normally that way, but it lacked the rosy undertone she had when she was happy and laughing and healthy and safe...

He stumbled to her side and fell to his knees. "Tasha?" he asked softly, not even letting himself imagine what would happen if she didn't reply. She whimpered, so softly his borderline superhuman hearing almost didn't catch it in the dead silence.

She was alive. Thank God.

Now that he knew she wasn't dead, all of his professionalism came rushing back. Clint stripped off his outer jacket, then his shirt, and put his jacket back on. He pulled off his belt and thanked his lucky stars that Natasha was so skinny. He firmly pressed the shirt to her side and belted it into place. He checked her over and found no injuries other than the obvious bullet wound. He gathered her into his arms and felt a cold hand close over his heart when he saw how her head lolled limply.

He stood and held Natasha to his chest protectively, then glared around the room, as if challenging someone to appear and try to hurt her. After a moment though, Clint realized he was being stupid and started for the stairs.

After much tripping and stumbling and cursing Clint founds a door and wrenched it open, and staggered into the bright sunlight and glared at the horizon. He would recognize that skyline anywhere.

Budapest.


End file.
